What works and what does not in the “Pomodoro” techniques
It’s one of the most popular time management method to train your brain avoiding distractions. It’s incredibly easy to put into practice and tomato timers are cute.
The Pomodoro Technique helps you with a few easy rules to divide your projects or smaller tasks to perform during full working sessions. As you may have heard, the most effective way to accomplish a marathon is to do the first steps. And if you have a technique to avoid distractions you can be surprised by how many tasks you get done!
The Pomodoro Technique can be used by yourself and even by your team. It’s good to accomplish bigger goals and to monitor the time you spend as a way to improve.
Why does it work?
If you work under an easy time constraint you’ll be much more focused. And since it’s difficult to keep this focus for too long you set a small relief break/reward time after that. 25 mins are enough to work consistently on a single task and not too much to interrupt that, like checking the email or whatever. The 25 minute are like a single step easy for you to bring to an end. Psychologically it can be very powerful. The message is: don’t think too much, just start.
Email is a greatly common example:
On Average an office worker checks their email inbox 30 times per hour.
There have been studies showing that some people work better when they work relatively quickly. Have you ever experienced your productivity improvement right before a deadline? Or while travelling by train, or flying, or even commuting by bus, perhaps with no WiFi/data connection?
There is this friend of mine. His father use to work as railwayman. This is the reason why he was entitled to travel for free by train, anytime it pleased him. He not only took advantage of this privilege, but he used to travel back and forward, no matter of the destination, just to bring books along with him and study on the train. Why? He had a low level of attention span and this way he could find better concentration.
Tools and similia
If you like it, beside checking the Pomodoro website, there are a bunch of tool to check:
- 43 Folders and the "Procrastination Dash"
- Focus Booster: a Pomodoro app for Mac and Windows.
- Pomodoro app for iPhone users.
- Pomodroido app for Android.
- EggTimer: a web version using the same technique.
Find out if “Pomodoro” works for you
There are some situations or professionals looking for a way to better manage their time, however the Pomodoro Techniques is not the best suit for them.
Meetings: don’t need to explain why. People jumping through different appointments will find this method not suitable.
This is for kids: some people feel unnatural cutting their workflow into small and precise time windows. The attention span is a personal characteristic, it may change a lot based on your attitude.
Most of the critiques state that the Pomodoro Technique is a junior level or “boyish” way to approach your work schedule. Those people affirm that they can keep themselves focused for two or three hours on a single task. I think they just didn’t get the point. Nowadays more and more professionals are interrupted by: chat, colleagues, ideas associations, phone, ads, email checking. Sometimes I think this is a kind of global increasing epidemia.
I do a work full of mini-tasks and interrelated things. Here is where Pomodoro can helps you. And you can change your time frames whatever you prefer. The author gives it for free but if you want to learn more head to the website and find out more.
Then, if you are a writer and you love to be in your mountain cabin writing for days, you probably won’t need any Pomodoro Technique.
Well, just try this out and let us know!
Disclaimer: this article was written under the Pomodoro Technique: (it took 6 pomodori)